DC’s Collective Liberty is a finalist for the 2020 SXSW Pitch competition

Cleveland Park-based Collective Liberty, a nonprofit using data and analysis to combat human trafficking, has been selected as a finalist for the 2020 SXSW Pitch in the Social and Culture category.

Founded in 2018, the organization collaborates with others in the anti-human trafficking industry to provide data-driven solutions to help stop the practice. Collective Liberty will compete against four other orgs in the Social and Culture category.

We're so excited and honored to be one of the 5 finalists pitching in the Social Category! Thank you for including us – and for believing in our work: ending human trafficking. See you in March! #SXSWPitch #startups https://t.co/baMW8aUKIX

— CollectiveLiberty (@CollectLib) January 22, 2020

“Now in our twelfth year of programming, we’ve become the premier competition for the hottest trends in tech representing the future,” said SXSW Pitch Event Producer Chris Valentine in a statement. “With our largest class of applicants yet, we’re pleased to see that SXSW Pitch continues to be a stage for the tech industry’s best and brightest to showcase their groundbreaking ideas and take their companies to the next level.”

SXSW reported that this year’s pitch event attracted more than 900 applications. Fifty finalists were selected to compete across 10 categories, including three new categories: Consumer Technology and CPG; Smart Cities, Transportation and Logistics; and Innovative World Technologies.

The finalists will pitch in front of a live audience and panel of judges on March 14 and 15 in Austin during the annual conference and music festival. Twenty-five companies will compete on each day, culminating in an awards ceremony on March 15 hosted by SXSW, where a Best in Show award and a winner from each category will be announced.

Last year, D.C.’s TwentyTables pitched in the Hyper-Connected Communities category and ultimately took home $1,000 and the award for Best Bootstrap Company.

“Standing up at SXSW Pitch and presenting alongside some of the most promising, most inspirational, most innovative startups in the world brings in to focus the path TwentyTables traveled to get us where we are, and the wonderful challenge in front of us,” TwentyTables founder and CEO Alexander Cohen told Technical.ly last year after the competition. “Nothing says resourcefulness, creativity and capital efficiency more than Best Bootstrap. We will climb, claw and kick our way to the top, and won’t stop until TwentyTables is the force it is destined to be.”